


Professional Curiosity

by yeats



Category: Taskmaster (UK TV) RPF
Genre: D/s, Dirty Talk, First Time, Kink Exploration, M/M, Masturbation, Verbal Humiliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 01:35:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18458765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeats/pseuds/yeats
Summary: Look, if Greg's being perfectly honest, he's always known this was about sex.





	Professional Curiosity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [libraralien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/libraralien/gifts).



They’re a month out from the live tapings for Series 7 when Greg gets a text from Alex: _We just finished a block of tasks at the house. We're having a mini-wrap party at eight o'clock, if you'd like to come._

He's just come back from doing the shopping, was putting away his groceries when his phone buzzed in his pocket. The late afternoon light slides across the floor beams, oblique and sly, as Greg stands there in the middle of his kitchen, a carton of eggs balanced in one hand and his phone in the other, trying to decide what to answer.

Normally, Greg wouldn't go to these things — not that he’s got anything against it, per se. It’s just. Normally Alex wouldn't invite him.

On the show, they make it out like Alex is a constant, irritating presence in his life, when really it’s nothing like that at all. Greg's not involved in the planning or taping of any of the tasks, so as to “maintain the impartiality and objectivity of his judgment;” Alex is surprisingly serious about stuff like that, which is laughable and honestly a little bit sweet. Sometimes, he does send Greg photos from when they're filming with the guests, but only fragments that don't make sense until months later: a garbage bag full of coconuts, Alex's jacket on a hanger with a flour handprint across the lapel. 

It’s been months since they've even seen one another, in fact, Greg working on the next series of _Cuckoo_ while Alex taped the American _Taskmaster_ remake.

Before he can think about it too much, there’s another text, in that same formal diction Alex always uses, the weirdo. (Even Greg's not _that_ old.) _I think you should come._

All right then.

Sitting in the back of a car headed to Chiswick, a bottle of whiskey snug against his side, Greg wonders about it some more.

Maybe it has something to do with Los Angeles. Of course he's happy the concept has taken off around the world; it's fucking funny, and Alex deserves every bit of attention and recognition.

But still, there’s something unnerving about knowing Alex is being his obsequious self for someone else…Greg shakes his head sharply, dislodging the thought as though it were water trapped in his ear.

By the time he pulls up to the cottage, dusk is settling into night. He thanks the driver, tips him twenty quid, and steps out onto the crunching pebbles of the drive.

The party itself is fairly tame: maybe a dozen crew members milling around the set, drinking from plastic cups and making small talk. He recognizes almost all of them from the results show taping, and everyone seems pleased to see him. It’s nice. He’s glad he’s come.

He doesn’t see Alex for a while – Al Murray is there for some fucking reason, chatting in the kitchen with one of the boom mic operators. Greg takes a moment to give him shit for coming round and drinking on the production company’s dime when his grandfather was the Home Minister or some shit like that.

“Piss off, you megalomaniac!” Al waves his beer at him. “Your fucking power over me expired a year ago,” but he’s grinning as he says it.

Eventually, Greg finds Alex talking to Tim Key in the room Alex rather daintily refers to as “the library,” and what Greg has always thought of as “Torture Chamber #2.” 

“Greg!” Alex says, his hands flying up like a pleased aunt at a baby shower. He makes a little abortive gesture that almost looks like he's going to hug Greg, of all the ridiculous things. Los Angeles must have really done a number on his brain. “You're here!”

“You did invite me,” Greg points out. “Hey, Tim.” 

“Hey.” Tim gives them both a very Tim look.

“And you came.” Alex smiles that big, goofy, gap-toothed smile of his. He’s flushed and bright-eyed in his white shirt and dark trousers, evidently having shed his suit jacket somewhere along the way.

Greg turns to Tim. “Is he pissed already?”

Tim chuckles. “Nah, he always gets flappy at the end of filming.” 

Alex gives an outraged little huff. 

“Well, let’s see if we can’t fix that,” Greg says, holding the bottle of whiskey aloft.

\--

At the end of the night, it’s just the two of them, sprawled out in the couch on the library. Greg sort of assumed Alex would be off by now, home to his family or joining some of the APs at the pub down the road. But here they are, passing the bottle of whiskey between them. It’s still mostly full (they’re neither of them young or dumb enough to get truly plastered on a Tuesday night), but there’s enough alcohol coursing through Greg to give him a bit of a buzz — and that’s what he feels like, to be honest: a buzzing in his veins, the low-level drone of a motor humming to life. 

Alex is telling a long meandering story about Los Angeles — something to do with Freddie Highmore and a basketball. Honestly, Greg can’t be fucked to listen.

“What was it like, though?” he asks, cutting Alex off.

“What?” His eyes always go a little cross-eyed when he gets interrupted, as though he’s trying to follow the trail of the conversation back from where he left it. It shouldn’t be as endearing as it is. “Ah, it was mostly – very hot? And dry.” 

“Not that part.” Greg waves a hand. “Recording with someone else – how was that?”

Alex gives a little huffing laugh. “Why. Are you – jealous?” 

Greg snorts. “No,” he says, and he’s not, truly. Jealousy isn’t the right word for it, the bracing jolt low in his gut when he thinks about someone else, a stranger, berating Alex in public. He doesn’t know what the word for it is. “Call it professional curiosity.”

Beside him, he can see Alex twitch a little. “He was great. Very fun. We had a really nice rapport.”

“Was he mean to you?” And if Greg lets a little of his Taskmaster voice leech into his words, the schoolmaster’s haughty disdain — well, maybe it’s being here, in the cottage, that makes it feel natural.

Or maybe it’s the way that Alex plays along, sliding down a bit lower in his seat with his shoulders rounded — his show posture, the thousand little character tics that he’s honed over the years. “He was very nice,” Alex says, and even his voice has taken on that familiar soppily naïve tone. 

“Was he? Was he very nice?” Greg mimics. 

“Yes, he was.”

“But that’s not really what you wanted, was it.”

As soon as Greg says it, he regrets it. Alex sucks in a breath, his eyes comically wide – and fuck, he’s crossed the line, hasn’t he. That’s the problem with years of doing improv: he’s spent so much time saying “yes, and…” that it’s fully overpowered the parts of his brain that would counsel restraint. (Which, come to think of it, probably explains how they’ve developed this particular dynamic in the first place. Huh.)

He’s about to say something, he’s not even sure what – apologize, maybe – when Alex mumbles, “It wasn’t.”

Another bolt of that indecipherable feeling hits Greg. And of course Alex’s been doing improv for years, too – of course he knows just as well as Greg how to build a scene. _Yes, and…._

“Of course not,” Greg twists the words. “You like this, don’t you? You like it when I tell you what a craven little worm you are.”

Alex swallows. “Yes.” He's flushing now, face red in a way that Greg knows has nothing to do with the whiskey. His hands scuttle across his lap, before dropping limply to his sides.

He glances down at his hands, then back up to meet Greg's eyes. 

“Yes,” he says again, and Greg knows that Alex heard the real question he was asking. “Please,” in a lower voice, and there it is – that feeling again, that jolt. 

Greg heaves himself upright and uses his height to loom over Alex, enjoying the little choked-off sound Alex makes — before plucking the whiskey bottle from his grasp and setting it down on the coffee table.

“Christ,” Greg exhales. “Look at the state of you.”

And look — if Greg's being perfectly honest, he's always known this was about sex, on some level. This rapport that he and Alex have spent onstage building, this dark and twisting cord that’s looped around Greg’s fist at one end and Alex’s throat at the other… You didn’t have to go to Oxbridge to know what sadomasochism was. (Although it certainly didn’t hurt, in Alex’s case.)

Still, the way Alex is breathing heavily, the unmistakable bulge in his trousers (or the press of Greg’s own cock against his jeans), the way he keeps shifting against the sofa… it’s almost startling how inevitable it all feels.

Greg slides his right hand along the back of the sofa behind Alex, plants his left foot on the ground and turns his body, boxing Alex in against the arm of the sofa. “Little Alex Horne,” he croons. “So pathetic.” 

“Christ,” Alex says, a weak echo of Greg only a moment ago. 

“Here’s something I’ve always wondered,” he says. “This is my house, but we both know I don't live here, do I? In fact, you’re the one who's always in and out of here all day, aren’t you?”

Alex nods, a fast jerk of his head. “Yes, I – yes.” His left leg starts to shake – Greg folds his hand over Alex’s kneecap, feels the tremors against his palm and the muted heat of his skin through the fabric.

“So really,” Greg goes on, “when there's pictures of me hanging in every room, when you can't take a step anywhere in this house without feeling like I'm watching you… That's for you, isn't it? You like to imagine I’m watching you.”

Alex squirms. Greg tightens his grip, pinning him in place. “I — um. Ah. Yes. A little bit.”

“Is that what you did when you were in America?” Greg says, goading him on a little. “You imagined I was there, that I could see you?”

“S-sometimes.”

“Mm,” Greg hums, as if a particular theory of his has just been confirmed. (And it has in a way, hasn’t it?) He slides his hand up Alex’s thigh, following the seam of his trousers and leans in, close enough that his lips brush Alex’s ear. “And what did I watch you do?”

Alex takes an ugly, gasping gulp of air. “I don’t know. I mean..”

“Yes, you do.” Greg closes his hand over Alex’s erection. “Was it this?”

“Fuck,” Alex whispers, his breath hot against Greg’s temple. “I – I don't –”

Greg squeezes. Alex _moans._

“Come on,” Greg coaxes. “You can say it. You know you want to.” He grinds the base of his palm against Alex’s dick.

“I’d touch myself.” Alex says it all at once, low and fast and humiliated.

He pops open the fly of Alex’s trousers, drags down the zipper and wraps his hand around Alex’s cock. “Little Alex Horne,” he says, “touching his little dick like the little pervert he is.”

“Yes,” Alex mumbles, “yes, fuck. I did.” 

Greg strokes him twice, and then pulls back.

“Show me,” he says. 

“ _Jesus_.” Alex hunches over like he’s been punched in the gut. His cock spurts a bit.

When Alex gets a hand around his own dick, his head lolls back and hits the back of the couch with a dull think. Greg watches the way he pulls at himself, the angle of his grip and the rhythm as he fucks his own hand. 

"That's good, isn't it," Greg says, in a voice he doesn't even recognize as his own. He transfers his hand to the back of Alex’s head, fingers splayed wide enough to cup the base of his skull.

Alex shoves his face against Greg's neck; Greg feels him take a deep breath. He can't get enough of an angle to really work his dick right, but the way he’s going Greg can tell it hardly matters.

"That's good," Greg says again, admiring. He thumbs Alex's hip, and Alex moans, quiet. Greg's nails dig into Alex’s scalp at the hairline. Alex gasps, tightening his own grip and speeding up.

"I'm going to come," Alex says after a moment. He looks up at Greg, terrified and so aroused Greg can barely see his pupils.

"Good," Greg says. “Come all over yourself.” There’s a roaring in his ears, a jet engine in his chest. 

Alex swallows, his hand nearly working too fast to be seen. When he finishes, it's with a long, low sigh — more of relief than ecstasy. As if he's been waiting for this to happen longer than tonight.

Greg knows the feeling.

Afterward, it’s Alex who speaks first. “I don't know how I'm going to get through filming in here now. I don't think I'm going to be able to look at this couch the same way again." His voice is still a bit thready from adrenaline, that post-orgasmic loopiness, but there's a note of uncertainty there. 

Greg knows what Alex is asking. An unexpected wave of fondness knocks him silent for a a moment. “You had better not," he says lightly. He run a hand over the crown of Alex's head, a gesture that somehow feels more intimate than anything they'e done so far.

Then he snarls his fingers into Alex's hair, and tugs _hard_ , pulling him forwards.

"After all," Greg says, unbuttoning his own trousers, "you're not done yet."

**Author's Note:**

> wow, this really took a turn from what i was planning on writing -- i'm sorry i didn't hew more closely to your prompts, but honestly i couldn't figure out how to write a sexual task that could hold a candle to the weirdly kinky stuff they already do on air! 
> 
> i hope i've still managed to include enough of your interests for you to enjoy it, and thank you so much for giving me an opportunity to write about these guys in the first place!


End file.
